Petticoat

Within minutes of Andrew Borden’s murder by hatchet on his sofa, Lizzie Borden raised the alarm and was soon standing (and sitting and lying on a lounge) within view of a dozen other people, including friends, neighbors, doctors and three police officers. Famously, not one of them noticed a single spot of blood on her—not on her hands, her face, her hair and certainly not on her clothes.

However, while no one saw any visible blood on Lizzie, one small blood drop was discovered on the white petticoat undergarment she handed over to police as one of the items she wore the day of the murders. When called to testify in court, Dr. William Dolan, the county medical examiner who was first given the petticoat to examine, said this spot was the “size of a pinhead,” and it was found on the outside of the garment, not the inside. How did he know this speck had landed on the outside? “Because the meshes of the cloth on the outside were filled with blood, and it had hardly penetrated on the inside.”

At the inquest, Lizzie was questioned about this spot on her petticoat, where it might have come from, and her only guess was a flea bite. She then clarified, “I told those men at the house that I had had fleas; that is all.” Later writers, such as Victoria Lincoln, suggested “fleas” was a local euphemism for menstruation. (Some students of the case are convinced that Lizzie meant the explanation to be taken literally, and the Borden house was perhaps plagued with fleas.) At the time of the trial, both the prosecution and the defense seemed satisfied with Lizzie’s explanation about the source of the spot. Dr. Edward Wood, the Harvard medical expert who had charge of analyzing all the blood evidence in the case, said it would have been impossible for him to tell the difference between menstrual blood and regular blood anyway.

That one tiny spot of blood on Lizzie’s petticoat has most often been considered irrelevant to the case; but, for some convinced of Lizzie’s guilt, it remains worth considering. They might argue for the impossibility for a woman’s flow to create a pinpoint-size spot, asserting that only blood moving at high velocity, such as from the blood spatter of an axe, could have made that spot. Plus, the dot of blood was found on the outside of the petticoat rather than inside, which would seem to indicate that it wasn’t from her monthly flow at all. While the physics of how spurting blood travels may or may not support that conclusion—most women know that menstrual blood can end up in all kinds of unexpected places on one’s clothing, inside or out. And how a blood spot from a hatchet murder might fly through the skirt of a dress and onto the petticoat beneath it would seem to be the neater trick. Yet, for some in the guilty camp, one spot of blood anywhere on the accused murderess is more telling than no blood at all and should not be dismissed.